Fashion Week decoded by 10 street-style supers

Prepare for the fash: NYFW is coming, so it's time to get excited (and, like, answer some big questions – including why are fashion seasons always six months ahead?) with 10 of the most stylish superbloggers of all time.

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Sooo… Fashion Week!

As anyone who works in fashion will tell you, Fashion Week is rarely an actual week. A fashion 'week' lasts for anything from four to 10 days, the main ones run from September to November in autumn, and January to March in spring and – dahhlings – they are truly exhausting.

Picture: Rex

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NY? It's the original Fashion Week city

Yup. While Paris was the home of couture (a whole other world of confusing schedules – find out about it here) ready-to-wear fashion weeks started in New York in 1943. Although regional fashion shows had been held in the US at department stores since around 1905, 'press week' in 1943 was the first time a collection of designers showed together, specifically for the press.

Picture: Rex

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And for that, we can thank World War II

Because by 1943 (midway through WWII), Parisian couture houses were making few new designs, and American buyers were unable to travel to Paris. So in order to turn the press and buyer's attentions to home-grown talent, legendary fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert set up NY Fashion Week.

Picture: Rex

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And where New York led, others followed

Not for a while, though: London and Paris established their own ready-to-wear fashion weeks long after New York (London came in 1961, Paris in 1973) with other cities – Milan and Berlin, for instance – following later.

Picture: Rex

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And the number of cities grew. And grew

These days, there's basically a fashion week happening somewhere, no matter what time of the year it is. From Stockholm to Shanghai and Tokyo to Delhi, cities across the globe have claimed their own weeks in order to showcase homegrown fashion talent.

Picture: Rex

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Right, the important bit: this is why the seasons are baffling

So, in September you see clothes for the following spring/summer, and in February you see clothes for the following autumn/winter. Which explains the completely baffling system of fashion weeks almost always being out of synch with what you actually want to wear.

Picture: Getty

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Because (drumroll…)

I mean, this is probably obvious, but the clothes you see on the catwalk are samples. Buyers for all kinds of stores (like ASOS!) go to Fashion Week, see the shows, decide what they want to order and sign a deal, and then the designer puts the orders put into production. This is still, mainly, the way things work, although…

Picture: Donfeatures

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Things are getting faster and faster

So you can now buy clothes straight off the catwalk. Ever-innovative Burberry, for instance, provided a live shop along with their AW13 collection, with bags and accessories that could be bought from the catwalk live, in February 2013.

Picture: Rex

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And bloggers? Well they changed everything

In the early 2000s, the traditional system of only magazines and newspapers reporting fashion and everyone else blindly following their trends started to change. And that's thanks to the web. Fashion blogs started around 2002 (The Budget Fashionista and BryanBoy were among the first) and within a year they had started to be known as a serious place to hear about fashion. By September 2003, Kathryn Finney (who founded The Budget Fashionista) had her first invitation to NYFW.

Picture: Getty

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And now…

Well, you don't need us to tell you how you get your fashion news, but once fashion blogs had changed the way we hear about fashion, social media came and changed it all again – giving us an even speedier insight into what happens at Fashion Week. Designers responded to social media by creating bigger and more impressive spectaculars. For instance, last year's SS14 Givenchy show (with a set that was a multi-car pile-up, as you do) was the ultimate social media Fashion Week moment with images of the show being shared around the globe instantly. To this year! Well, NYFW kicks off 4 September (this Thursday, eep!), so check out the ASOS social platforms for live coverage, and see what's incoming for SS15.